


Glass Skin

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F, Fem!Elemmírë, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Gen, Grief/Mourning, It depends on how much you believe of Míriel's story, Possibly Alternate Universe, Rebirth, Sculpture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-03-10 22:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3305351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Míriel comes back to live (but ghosts are hard to leave behind).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Leaving the Halls of the dead was a laborious process. The transition from death to life was not any less crushing than its reverse, the pouring of consciousness into a body resembling a succession of restless, tortuous dreams, and thus it was common for the reborn to awake exhausted and disoriented, perceiving the world like an unwelcome intrusion. 

The world Míriel awoke to was a world which had been thrown off its course, and a world to which she had no true connection.

She had spent too little time in Valinor before her death to feel like she really belonged there, and half of it she didn't want to remember. Most of the people she had known were gone too, according to what Estë told her after she had become accustomed enough to her new body to take food and listen to people talk.

The Valië offered her a place in Lórien, as one of her handmaidens. Míriel refused. If she had had any mind to spend the rest of her life in the service of a Valië, she wouldn't have left the Halls in the first place. The result would have been the same.

“I shall go back to Tirion,” she said, after a protracted silence, making no effort not to sound contrary (it took effort just to let her voice out). 

Estë graced her with a pitying look.

Tirion was a ghost town, it wasn't the right place for her, she was told. She would do better to seek shelter in Valmar – Ingwë would surely welcome her, they would treat her well and not hold the past against her. Míriel didn't reply. There was no point in explaining her perspective to the Valië if she couldn't guess it on her own. 

Míriel had come out of the Halls to live, and she would steer her own life the way she wanted to, now. Lórien or Valmar would have been a limitation. She would have had to conform to expectations, abide by a set of rules which had already undermined her once, under the regards of people who – she knew – couldn't understand her any better than the Valar. A town populated by ghosts was more appealing. She herself was little more than a ghost, a haunting memory unexpectedly returning.

The journey wasn't easy, and not because of the darkness. Every abrupt movement threatened to make her dizzy, and steering a nervous horse under the feeble light of the stars on roads she barely remembered required all her concentration. Míriel nevertheless pressed on. She wanted to reach her destination as quickly as possible. Activity, movement. It was the best way to find purchase over life again. 

She had had no precise idea, at first, where to go once she reached Tirion. She certainly couldn't go back to the royal palace. Indis's son had reportedly been awarded the high kingship, after he had returned and begged the Valar's forgiveness. Estë had said it with the utmost seriousness. Perhaps they feared she would prove _too_ independent. Perhaps they worried she would prove as difficult as her son. 

“Where is Fëanáro's house?” she had asked, as the thought of her son peered into her new existence for the first time. 

They gave her directions, albeit with reluctance. It would have been impossible to find the house otherwise.

The neighbourhood in which it stood was silent, and entirely dark, until she lit the lamps that had been left behind, hung across the gardens and all around the house (they were identical to the one she had been given in Lórien). 

It wasn't a large building, two storied, marble-white, and very soberly decorated on the outside, affording no suggestion of its inner opulence.

People from other parts of the town paid no attention to her, and she didn't seek their company. She had been born and raised in Cuiviénen and she knew how to look after herself, even in the dark. Only once a messenger from the Palace came to warily investigate into who had taken residence in that house.

“Míriel Þerindë, your queen,” she replied, on impulse, and was rewarded by the look of uneasy consternation that spread on the woman's face.

*

Of course she wasn't a queen, and – whatever the Valar might have feared – she didn't care to be. But she had her own little kingdom. 

She explored the house slowly, and slowly got to know its missing inhabitants. Every room was a casket of treasures. The library had more books than she had ever seen in her previous life. There were portraits. Unfinished projects. Clothes, jewelry, works of art so bizarre they made her smile, or so ingenious they captivated her attention for hours. 

In one bedroom, which she later found out had belonged to her fourth grandson, there was a trove of yarn and thread of all types, some of which hadn't existed before her death. She pulled it all out, and sat in the middle of it, her spirit, still unaccustomed to physical touch, rediscovering sensations it had known, and learning new ones.

She very easily forgot to eat during those first days in her new house. The rhythms and needs of a new hröa weren't attuned with the fëa's. It was a balance that could only gradually be re-established and honed, but she had all the time. 

*

Nobody came to tell her of Fëanáro's death. After the news of it spread, however, the neighbourhood became suddenly more lively. Some gathered outside the house to chant their satisfaction. Some knocked on the door to share their opinion with her directly. 

She was unsure what they expected her to say, or to do. She would not say sorry on her son's behalf, and she wouldn't revile him, either. She understood their anger, but she hadn't been part of what had led the majority of the Ñoldor to leave. She didn't feel she was in a position to assign blame or mete out reproaches. 

Several lines of writing appeared one day on the wall to the right of the main door. She noticed them by chance, as she went back inside from the pantry she had discovered next to the building which housed the forges, where all manner of foodstuffs that would have been unsuited for the road had remained (it had been a repository of work materials at first, food had only made its way there later on, she could tell). The sweet (but not too sugary) taste of the elderberry jam she had retrieved helped her to appreciate the irony of the gesture, since the cowards who had no better way to vent their hate had had to use the alphabet Fëanáro had devised to write their message, and could do it only thanks to the lamps he had made, and freely given.

“Your victory, Fëanáro.”

He would be part of their lives forever, whether they wanted him to or not. The thought made her grin. She traced the shape of the letters, wondering which ones formed his name. She admired the harmony in the elegant alternation of rounds and straight lines, visible even in the crudely written message, but she was unable to decipher it. Learning to read Fëanáro's letters hadn't been one of her priorities. She was too busy with more immediate concerns, and with pursuits that interested her more. Now she walked into the library, setting the jar of elderberry jam down on the table, and after a long, painstaking search found a book in which the tengwar and their use were explained alongside the sarati she had used. It appeared to be a very old book, perhaps a teacher's book. 

The deluge of details made her smile. She remembered her own jotted notes of her projects and of the new techniques she had experimented. She either went in too much detail, or took too many passages for granted, and so she could never set up a school, or have apprentices, apart from a couple very dedicated – and very patient – students, a girl and a boy (she wondered what had become of them).

She dipped the spoon in the jam, and brought it to her mouth. 

'M-í-r-i-e-l-Þ-e-r-i-n-d-e-n' were the first words she spelled out, the ones written – in large letters to fill an unfillable void – in the dedication. 

*

Nerdanel came soon after. 

Míriel let her choose which room she wanted to sit in. She only ever used a few of them, and a couple she hadn't been into yet. 

Nerdanel took a seat in the main hall, where some of her statues still guarded the empty house from the niches hollowed out along the walls, looking around as if she expected ghosts to jump out at her from any corner. She wasn't dressed in mourning, and seemed heartened by the fact that Míriel wasn't either. 

It's hard to mourn for somebody you never knew. Míriel felt a sense of loss, and longing, but both had lurked in her consciousness for so long she hardly took note of them.

Nerdanel talked about Fëanáro. She talked of him, of her, of them, their children and an irreversible deterioration to estrangement. 

“You made your own choices,” Míriel said at one point, unnerved by the confused stream of recollections, accusations and explanations she was barraged with. “Won't you tell me exactly why you left?”

“I-...I couldn't stand it any longer. He was...he was always somewhat ill-tempered – he had unpleasant moments, but towards the end he had become unmanageable. Irritable, and stubborn beyond reason.”

Míriel tensed. She had to remind herself that Nerdanel wasn't talking about her. But her words sounded so similar to the ones she had read (or thought to read) in Finwë's eyes three centuries earlier. _Unmanageable_ , like a mule that refuses to move.

_Don't be so stubborn!_

“So...why did your sons choose him over the possibility of a peaceful, virtuous life with you?” she asked, coolly, in the same resolute manner she would have cut loose ends of thread. 

Nerdanel looked up, eyes glazed with tears she was fighting to hold back.

“They-...he...I'm sure he led them astray. He must have pressured them, somehow.” 

“And you let it happen? Your father and mother?” Míriel prodded. “Am I supposed to believe that seven distinct individuals would all so thoroughly be manipulated?”

“I-...”

“You can't accept that they wanted to leave.”

Nerdanel evaded Míriel's keen stare, looked around again, then shook her head. 

Míriel felt a sliver of sympathy for her – it must have been hard to come to terms with the fact that your sons all cleaved to their father to the point of killing with him. She couldn't quite relate on that, because it occurred to her as she looked at Nerdanel clench and open her fists nervously on the armchair where she sat that it was the one thing that had never happened to her. 

“My grandsons...they all had a right to decide for themselves, too.”

Nerdanel knitted her eyebrows. “...wouldn't you have preferred your son to stay here?”

“I cannot say. I wasn't here. I know he would have been happy if I had stayed.” Sundry little things in that house proclaimed it. “...but that wasn't something I could do. Have you ever taken into consideration that staying here would very likely have been as rending for them as it was for you to see them go, if it wasn't what they wished?”

_Why must you leave, can't you heal here?_

“But the Valar said-”

Nerdanel's rebuttal died as quickly as it had begun, as she noticed the change in Míriel's expression – a corner of the mouth slightly pulled up and the eyes slightly narrowed, an expression she had been well acquainted with.

“The Valar weren't welcome in this house, and still aren't”. 

_Won't you come back yet? The Valar said-..._

Míriel's sympathy was replaced by irritation for the lauded Aulendur's daughter who had never lacked for her family's understanding, and their support, who had a father and a mother and siblings who loved her and to whom she could turn, and who would have wanted her children to abandon her husband in the name of somebody else's judgement. She clearly didn't know how smothering it was to feel entirely alone, cut off as a branch severed from a tree, and left to rot. 

_All future change and choice will be taken from her._

Míriel reined her annoyance in, before it could turn to anger. “You can come here whenever you want, should you feel the need to” she said, in dismissal. 

Nerdanel left.

The words of the decree had been copied into an ornate volume, by a steady, elegant hand (a hand that would no longer write). Over the centuries they had been read, time and again. At one point the page had been crumpled and nearly torn away from the hefty tome. Míriel had felt both a knot of repugnance, and joy to know that somebody else had been cursing those words while she couldn't. She pulled out that tome and opened it at that easily recognized page. 

She vowed to read the words until they faded back into the parchment, until she thoroughly undid them. 

*

After Nerdanel, it was Indis's turn.

She knocked on the door, and stood silently, almost statue-like, on the doorstep, wrapped in a modest shawl, when Míriel opened it. 

Míriel had no resentment towards her. She had been merely an accessory, willing but not determining, in the remarriage. Yet the sight of compassionate countenance, even blurred to a patchwork of shadows in the light cast by the lamp above the door, made her feel like throwing up. 

Míriel didn't want compassion, and didn't need it. Compassion had always been a poison, because it dispensed people from understanding, and Indis was the last person she would have accepted it from, at any rate. 

She slammed the door in her face – she barely caught a glimpse of Indis's startled face as she did.

She turned away, but was aware that Indis remained where she was. 

The irrational fear that if Indis remained there for much longer – or worse, if she entered that house, one of the windows was open wide to let some air in – she would fade back into blackness, into confusion, into nothingness gripped her. 

She recalled, as a prickling upon her skin, the doom, the knowledge that her husband would accept it in order to marry another woman, have more children. The slippery ground on which she had been trying to regain her balance had been pulled from under her feet, and she had fallen, a long fall like rolling down an endless spiral staircase.

Indis finally left. Relief flooded through Míriel at the sound of her shuffling feet. She leant her weight against the door and slid down to the floor. She hugged herself tightly in a ball, and in that moment she would have wanted Fëanáro to be there, in the flesh and blood she had given him, not simply as a presence lingering in small objects and the layout of the house. 

He would have hugged her, and she would have been able to say 'protect me', without fear of being rebuked or misunderstood.

Protect me from her, as you always have. 

*

The sun shone bright months later (or years; keeping track of time in the dark was a futile effort), and seemed to usher Elemmírë's golden head in through the back garden as an emissary of its brilliance.

“I thought for a moment Indis had come back.”

“Oh” Elemmírë scoffed indignantly, the smile that had been lightening her features replaced by a pout. “How could you mistake me for Indis?”

“There are still things I have to guard myself from, I've found,” Míriel said. The steely hand of the past was still coiled around her wrist, and sometimes tugged. She had to be ready to tug back. She looked Elemmírë up and down. “You still manage to look like you just ran away from orcs through a thick forest,” she giggled, and reached up to pull a leaf or two out from her friend's dishevelled hair. 

“Sorry for not living up to your standards of femininity.”

“I still like proper dress, that's all.” Míriel put a hand to Elemmírë's reddened cheek. “I missed your wrinkles. You have a couple new.”

Elemmírë leaned into the touch. Her wrinkles marked her out as one of the oldest elves, one who had faced insidious dangers, time and again, and survived. So old she didn't exactly know who she was herself. 

She sat down on a bench, the one right opposite the tall glass doors at the back of the house. The sight from there – the withered garden where Maitimo had planted the flowers he so loved (only weeds thrived in it now, under the sun), the (now dry) little fountain in the middle of it with the bronze stag on top of it, the eight-pointed star gleaming above the balcony on the second floor – was such a familiar one...

She looked down. 

“I...I-”

Míriel sat down beside her and entwined their arms, encouraging her to go on. 

“I...came here, from time to time. He was the closest I could get to you. I- also thought to leave -”

“...you would have killed?”

Elemmírë dropped her head – her shoulders sagged – and heaved a deep sigh. 

“...I couldn't believe it when I learnt you had come back – Ingwë's wife was livid when she heard you refused to see Indis, _twice_ , saying you're as bad as your son...that crooked children can only come from crooked wombs...I did nearly did run all the way here.” The alternative would have been punching the High Queen of the Elves' face in. “Can I stay for a few days?”

“If you wish.”

“You could have sought me, you should -”

“I don't want to attract unwanted attention, especially not in Valmar...I get more than I want as it is, and I don't particularly feel like going out, either. I have all that I need here.” 

“Not _all_ -” Elemmírë turned towards Míriel and leant down. “You shouldn't be alone.” Her arms, strong arms, the arms of a hunter, a painter, and a poet, wrapped around Míriel and drew her flush against her own body. “Ingwion might not let me go back to Valmar, if he knows I stooped to visiting this town of disobedience.”

“I'd sympathise with him if he didn't,” Míriel quipped, and felt her friend tense around her “You stink.”

Elemmírë made to let her go. “Sorr -”

Míriel pulled her back and covered her lips with her own. 

The kiss was awkward at first – like the first kiss of two inexperienced young lovers, but they soon recalled their once-carefree familiarity. 

“Þerindë,” Elemmírë whispered into it, and Míriel felt like her own existence became a little sturdier and a little more rooted.

It was in Elemmírë's sweaty embrace that she felt something was truly right for the first time in centuries.

*

“Elenë,” Míriel called as she heard the sound of Elemmírë's footsteps on the staircase that led to the cellars, “does this expression mean what I take it to mean?”

Elemmírë hastened to go back to the large drawing room on the ground floor into which they moved a bed, carrying a flask of mellow, blackberry-flavoured red wine (there were caskets enough to last many more decades; wine had been unaffected by the Darkening). 

The room had once been an open loggia, but after Elemmírë herself had painted the ceiling, Fëanáro had had the wide arches closed by windows. It was the brightest room in the house, and the sun's refulgence, and the varying inclination of its rays, made it sparkle more than Laurelin had, dancing on the many coloured marbles of the walls, and the gold-gilded fittings of the furniture. 

Míriel pointed at a line in a manuscript of the Aldudénië Elemmírë had written for her own perusal, as she lay face down on the bed, naked.

“I knew you'd pick that up,” Elemmírë said, putting the wine on the table behind the bed before climbing on it. “You wouldn't believe how long it took the best literary critics in Valmar to suspect that it might have a double meaning.”

Míriel raised both eyebrows. Her surprised countenance had always something comical about it, because she had never bothered to temper it. “You mean, they sing it in Manwë's face?”

“With the utmost seriousness...well, I guess if you spent your life basking in the Light mouth agape, or depended on every word Manwë said even if it were mud, you'd have a hard time taking those words at anything more than face value.”

“Makes me want to climb Taniquetil just to cackle through it.” Not that she had any intention to. She had declined several invitations from the holy mountain with a single line message, always the same: _'I shall come with my son'_. She wouldn't have accepted even had Fëanáro been there to accompany her (and had been willing to), but she chose that reply because it was the one that was sure to pique the recipients the most. 

Elemmírë lay down, with her head carefully placed so that her golden hair covered the open book, and Míriel couldn't go on reading. She pulled her over her naked chest.

“You should have married me.”

“No,” Míriel denied, frank and curt. “I loved Finwë and I wanted to marry him. I was happy. What happened afterwards doesn't change that.” 

She had tried to impress the same concept on the people who still came to the house from time to time, and attempted to _reason_ with her, claiming that it would have been better for everybody, herself included, if Fëanáro had never been born. They seemed surprised that she didn't hold Fëanáro responsible for her death, in the same way – she clarified – she wasn't responsible for what he had done. 

“I still would like to punch him, though,” Elemmírë said. She had never liked Finwë.

“You won't ever get a chance to...the Valar don't give anything for free.” And were not loath to demand, in return. 

Míriel let the past tug her back into its treacherous maze of loss and struggle, then knelt up and frowned down at Elemmírë. “Elenë...if we stop doing things because we fear the consequences, where does that leave us?”

Elemmírë remained silent, waiting for Míriel to go on on her own. She knew there were many things Míriel needed to unburden herself of, but at the same time never prodded her, never asked her questions, leaving her free to reveal whatever she would reveal.

“...it turns us into your kin the Vanyar, who need the guidance and approval of the Valar for anything.”

“Not all.”

“Yes yes, not all. But most, you said it yourself...they would collectively dive off a cliff if the Valar told them it was for some good purpose. A flock of sheep droven by barking dogs.”

Elemmírë lightly shook her head. She had become sufficiently disenchanted with Valinor and its costly promises herself, and was not a little upset by how her people still danced to a droning tune. She focused on Míriel – her lithe frame, her full breasts, the way her silver hair took on a diamond-like lustre in the sun. The best Valinor had to offer her now was there, and she couldn't bring herself to care what sacrifice the Valar had demanded for it. 

“Well, then...I guess that makes you Ñoldor goats...laying waste to everything while bleating really loud among yourselves.”

Míriel seemed to subject the jibe to serious reflection. “...and jumping on things.”

Elemmírë smirked. “I'd love it if you jumped on me right now.”

Míriel raised both eyebrows, but moved to straddle her, gliding her hands down Elemmírë's sides to tickle. 

“And you style yourself a poet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I don't believe a word of the dialogue between Míriel and Finwë in LaCE, it's quite certain that the only way for Míriel to come back was via Finwë remaining dead forever (as per the Statute), so I'm keeping that here. She comes back, in my headcanon, at about the time of Losgar. "All future change and choice will be taken from her" is a direct quote from the Shibboleth version of her story, but is in essence what happens in all of them.
> 
> Míriel Þerinden is the dative of the name (i.e. 'for Míriel Þerindë'), as per the Quenya rule of the last declinable name (otherwise it'd be Míriellen Þerinden).
> 
> The title is from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdnRZQ6J83o).


	2. Chapter 2

Nerdanel visited Míriel again three years after the first rising of the sun. 

She came unannounced, with some of her father's aides, and strutted into the house as if it were still her own, as if she had never left. She led the way for her companions, who hoisted a large, oddly-shaped and very heavy-looking object up the low staircase to the main door, and pushed and pulled it on a wheeled platform through several rooms. They finally set it down in one of the small side rooms at the north-eastern corner of the ground floor, the one facing the garden at the back. 

Míriel followed, and observed them in guarded silence. She stood at some distance from them and didn't respond to the men's greeting when they left, carrying their ropes and the platform away with them. 

Once they were alone, while the sound of footsteps got fainter and fainter and the front door was slammed shut, Nerdanel undid the clasps keeping the large cloth that covered the object in place.

“I hope you have a valid justification for this intrusion,” Míriel said in a dry tone, still holding in her left hand the knitting needles she had been working with when the party had suddenly appeared in the garden. 

“A very good one,” Nerdanel countered, without looking up from her task.

She untied the last knot, and finally yanked on the cover, which slid off the object and onto the floor.

Míriel couldn't suppress a gasp as her eyes settled on the sculpture which had been revealed – a large rectangular block of marble, only the top of which had been worked to depict a lying figure.

“It's –” she began, but somehow couldn't bring herself to say the name.

“It's Fëanáro,” Nerdanel said in her stead, picking up the cover to fold it, “dying.”

It was Fëanáro, lying on jagged rocks with his arms slightly raised and his head thrown back, open wounds bleeding small curls of blood and fire erupting from the middle of his chest in delicate waves. Míriel's gaze ran up towards the hollow cheeks, framed by thin strands of hair and pieces of shattered armour. 

It was exquisite work, the marble sculpted and polished to render the tiniest details to perfection.

Míriel clenched her right hand into a fist and composed herself. She raised her head and looked towards the other side of the statue, where Nerdanel had finished folding the covering, and now hugged it to her chest.

“I believe there are people who would be far more pleased by this.”

“I have not sculpted it out of spite,” Nerdanel said, but it sounded false and she returned Míriel's inquisitive gaze with a small nod. There was a hint of rancour in the sculpture, there was bitterness she needed to rid herself of. “It was...something I needed to get off my chest. And something I needed to prove. I used to be told fire cannot be represented in stone. Fire cannot be depicted by marble – it's too fleeting, and marble too hard, too unbending...and that's why we turned out to be incompatible,” she resumed, her tone tingeing with an ardent vehemence, conveying her passion for her work and the emotions underlying it. “But I disagree. With the right amount of skill and dedication, anything can rendered even in marble...and he was fire _and_ stone.”

“Stone can represent fire, but it cannot become fire,” Míriel contended. “And you cannot carve people in the same manner. You cannot take a scalpel to a person's heart and hack away at what you don't like...or approve of.” Her right hand extended towards the sculpture, hovered close to one of the outstretched hands, but as it drew closer, she became aware of how cold the marble was. She pulled her hand back at the last moment, right before it could touch. 

“I think it would have benefited your son to be more malleable.”

“You mean it would have benefited you.”

“That too, yes,” Nerdanel avowed, “and everybody else besides.”

“Everybody else,” Míriel echoed and gave a wry smile. She tucked the knitting needles into the bag and walked over to a chair, where she set it down. With both her hands free and clasped together in front of her womb, she went back to stand right opposite Nerdanel. “I confess I do not understand this animosity. Or rather I do, but I believe it to be...not fully warranted.” 

Nerdanel made to speak, but Míriel lifted her right hand in a gesture that commanded silence, before returning it to the hold of her left one. “My husband turned from me when I was ill, and agreed to sever our bond to pursue his own happiness. You left on your own legs, of your own _conscious_ deliberation. Your life never ceased to be your own. Besides, you are completely free now. He is not your husband any longer, thanks to the merciful Valar.”

“I do not mind that the marriage was dissolved.”

“I did not doubt it,” Míriel said, and her smile became oddly benign. “Yet the fact remains that Námo did not ask for your opinion, and would have paid no heed to it either way...if you had voiced any sort of dissension, he would have rebuked you, admonished you. You are inferior to him. You are weaker. You do not know best. ...and you count yourself on their side”.

“It was my choice,” Nerdanel pointedly retorted. 

“You are their servant, and daughter of servants...of course.”

Nerdanel took a sharp, nervous breath, and hugged the cover tighter. “...Finwë, for all his faults, never had recourse to petty gibes. I did wonder, at times, whether Fëanáro inherited this propensity from you.” 

Míriel quirked one eyebrow at the remark - she had been expecting Nerdanel to say something like that. She looked down at her feet, at the slippers she wore, the smallest she had been able to find the house, decorated with fine lacework mixed with embroidery that clumsily sought to imitate her own. When she raised her head again, she asked, “will you marry again?”

The question took Nerdanel off guard – it was clear from her expression she was not prepared to answer it – but she quickly composed herself again. 

“I do not know...I have never given the notion much consideration. Will you?”

“I do not intend to,” Míriel tersely said.

“...is it true that Finwë will not be permitted to return?”

“That is the Valar's law. No Amanya can have two wives living. I am certainly not going back for him,” Míriel replied, her voice still firm, but with a rougher edge to it. “I confess I do not understand why the Valar should have any say on who or how we love. I doubt Eru truly cares if we love more than one person at a time...and if he does, I pity him.”

After that they both remained in silence. Nerdanel made to leave after a while, but Míriel started speaking again just as she took the first step towards the door.

“Did he –” Míriel began.

“What?”

Míriel stared at the sculpture – Fëanáro's face looked _too_ real – and whatever she had wanted to ask was never uttered.

“Do you want compensation?”

Nerdanel gave a decisive shake of her head. “No...it is a gift.”

Míriel nodded. “Very well. I will treasure it.”

As soon as Nerdanel left, Míriel's shoulder slumped and she exhaled noisily. She turned to look at the statue again.

She didn't like it. Not because Nerdanel had sculpted it, or because of why she had. 

It was an object. It was somebody else's idea of Fëanáro. It was a wonderful product of skill to be discussed. It was vicarious fire. It made her feel angry, and impotent, because there was nothing she could do to turn that idea into the living soul she so desperately yearned to meet.

She turned her back on the sculpture and walked to the windows, looking out at garden, where Elemmírë's efforts had restored the colour and cheer of flowers to the bleak desolation left by the Darkening. She had an idea. Elemmírë would very likely be angry at her, but she could put up with that. She flung one of the large floor-to-ceiling windows open and ran outside. She began plucking all the flowers that were already in bloom, putting them into her held-up skirt. Once it was full to overflowing, she ran back to the house, stopping just next to the sculpture. She dropped her skirt. The flowers fell disorderly on the statue, piling in the depressions; some slid to the floor. Míriel scattered them all over it, until the white of the marble was half hidden by pinks and reds and blues, oranges, deep yellows and bright bright green, and it almost looked like Fëanáro was sleeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per the Statute, a marriage is automatically dissolved if one spouse is to remain in the Halls of Mandos forever.
> 
> Míriel is said in the Shibboleth to be stubborn but gentle, which is kind of a contradiction to me, because stubborn people are _never_ easy to deal with (even if they're 'quiet' about it).


End file.
